“Grant that. How far from the flames you will produce underground will the furnaces of the factory be?”
Jimmy thought a moment. “Why, maybe five hundred or a thousand feet.”
“And you propose to transport the heat that distance and then apply it to crucibles for the fusion of glass?”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy answered promptly, although he had only a vague idea what Mr. Hope meant by these technicalities.
“What temperature do you suppose you could attain?”
“Why, I—I don’t know,” said Jimmy.
“Could you get a temperature of say sixteen hundred degrees centigrade?”
“I—I—” Jimmy suddenly remembered how he had once boiled eggs over a hole of the burning mines. “What’s the temperature of boiling water?” he asked abruptly.
Jimmy was holding his own, not by his ability to argue, but by his astounding ingenuousness. The secretary gasped a little at such a question coming at such a time.
“One hundred degrees centigrade,” he managed to reply.